


Gain Staging

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actor Remus, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Audio Engineer Sirius, Audiobook Recording, Casual Sex, Come as Lube, Explicit Sexual Content, Horny idiots, Hotel Sex, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Minor pining, Semi PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 08:45:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17659559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Recording an audiobook can be horribly tedious, but Sirius finds that ogling the talent makes itjusta bit more bearable.





	Gain Staging

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starstruck4Moony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starstruck4Moony/gifts).



> A few little drabbles I played with on Tumblr got some love, and this one in particular got a few requests to live on AO3–so here it is in one piece, with several bridging pieces filled out because we all know it wouldn’t be a PWP from me if I didn’t shamelessly hamfist my kinks into it~~~~~
> 
> Much love to Starstruck4Moony as my audio pal/domestic “queen”/partner in silly, sexy crime <3
> 
> I hope you enjoy, thanks for reading!

“Check, check one-two.”

Shit. 

Fucking  _ shit. _

The actor’s voice had been nice in the kitchen as he traded his pleasantries and shuffled the manuscript pages into order in his arms,  _ Hi, Remus, nice to meet you,  _ warm handshake and a warm smile, and Sirius had guarded himself against it. Truly, he had! His wall of professionalism is strong and impenetrable, but currently Remus’ voice is being gently compressed and finely amplified and piping through a $3000 microphone diaphragm, and Sirius Black is utterly fucked. 

“Uhh.” Sirius’ thumb is clammy when he presses down the talk-back button—his  _ thumb, _ who the hell sweats through their  _ thumb _ ?! He squeezes his eyes shut for a brief second and habitually adjusts the single headphone skewed over one ear. “Awesome, I’ve got you.”  _ ‘Got me,’ alright. _ “Just a bit more level, what did you have for breakfast?”

Sirius glances up through the glass of the doubled sliding doors into the booth where Remus is sat at the table within and settling himself in for the record. Remus Lupin, the industry’s rising star of voiceover work—visiting the area to visit his mother, out of all the goddamn saccharine things he could have been here for—is in to record an audiobook. Sirius was supposed to be on vacation this week, if not for a bungled airline ticket confirmation. 

All things considered, this might be nicer. If not slightly masochistic. 

Sirius has been a hopeless fan of Remus’ voice for years.

“Well, I started with some toast and coffee, and my hotel had these lovely little pastries. Of which I took four. Plump, buttery, ssssweet pastries. Is that good?” Remus shoots a genuine little smile through the glass at Sirius, hair skewed just a bit for the seat of the headphones, and Sirius hopes to fuck his face isn’t literally aflame. Of course Lupin hit all the right sibilance and pop tests. That fact should decidedly not be sexy as his accent, clearly from somewhere grey and far across the Atlantic, and fucking  _ yet.  _

“Yup, perfect.”  _ Better than perfect, it’s fantastic, I want to lick your goddamn vocal cords— _ “Start at the introduction, then?” Sirius grinds his jaw and shuts down his racketing garbage fire of a libido. He prays his tension isn’t evident; won’t do to stress the talent before they’ve even started. 

“Cheers, let me know when you’re rolling.”

Sirius poises himself over the first page of the manuscript, flicks the record button, and nods as he thumbs the talk-back again. “Rolling whenever you’re set.”

_ “I’ve always thought murder was a dangerous game. That is, until I played it myself.” _

Sirius groans, audibly, thankful for the division of silence he has alone at the engineering console. Of  _ course _ it’s fucking noir. Of  _ course _ it’s a sequel in the penny detective series currently flying off the shelves, of which Sirius has listened to its entirety through Remus’ recordings. Of  _ course _ Remus’ voice drops into that familiar sotto, rocky texture for the voice of Maxwell Hind,  _ private eye, lady lover, monster slayer.  _ Of. Fucking. _ Course.  _ Sirius is doomed to several 6-hour sessions of recording trapped in a glass case of feelings. 

It’s easier when it’s some sort of moldering professor at the microphone, not the aural equivalent of a stark-naked demigod primed and waiting for Sirius to—

By the miracle of professional instincts, Sirius clicks in the talk-back and marks a slash on the script over the current sentence. “It looks like you missed a word there.”

“Ah, right! Good eye, Sirius. I think we’ll make a good team for this one.” Remus grins at him again and Sirius tries not to melt. 

“Ha. Me too. Ah, rolling.”

Sirius taps an insistent foot on the floor and silently curses his fluster as Remus continues. He should steel himself. There’s probably a sex scene coming. There are probably  _ several _ sex scenes coming up. 

Wonderful. 

Thankfully, this book is smut-free for approximately twelve pages. By then, Sirius and Remus have hit a fine stride in the session’s flow and Sirius has largely forgotten to be a mess amidst the script marking and take tracking. But he may as well have ears made of jello when Remus starts describing Detective Hind’s navigation of a conquest. 

_ “I fell back onto the bed and she followed after me, pressing her knee just so and making my cock jump to life. I groaned past her pretty red lips as a particulary sweet stroke of—” _

“Fuck—ah, sorry, um.” Sirius fights to swallow dryly around his explanation for pausing Remus’ read and then all but shouting  _ Fuck _ into the poor man’s headphones. The way the actor had said  _ cock _ had gone straight to Sirius’ own and— _ NOPE, stop, focus on the job, you idiot. _ “Flubbed a word, ‘particularly.’”

“Right, bollocks, I hate that one. Everyone uses it, ‘par-ti-cue-lar-lee.’ It’s quite hideous, isn’t it?” Remus raises an eyebrow at Sirius and Sirius smiles despite himself, somehow finding the courage to lean his cheek on a hand in just a bit of a flirtation as he presses the talk-back again and leans into the console mic. 

“It’s  _ particularly _ bad. You’re not the first reader to hate it.”

Remus laughs, and Sirius is suddenly very grateful he didn’t stop recording for the fine fortune of capturing that sound on tape. There’s an easy happiness to his eyes when Sirius resets the take and looks up at him to confirm he’s rolling, and Sirius finds that he doesn’t mind this time if he’s blushing or not. 

Alright. This is absolutely going to be better than vacation. 

_ Particularly  _ if Remus keeps smiling at him like that over the rim of his tea. 

—

“So you’re a big fan of Maxwell Hind then?”

Sirius buries himself in a long sip of beer to avoid replying immediately with  _ Well, I’m a bigger fan of your voice. _ He and Remus had just wrapped the last day of recording, two hours ahead of schedule for Remus’ ridiculous ability to navigate words like a well-seasoned captain and consistently stay several pages ahead of their daily goal. When Remus had suggested the brewery down the street from the studio, Sirius was powerless to do anything but agree to the drink. 

All week Remus had been a fucking dream in the booth. Talented, witty, professional, the perfect holy trinity of voiceover. Sirius appreciates it and wants it to continue beyond their allotted four days, which is rare for his general attitude toward recording but feels too good to ignore in this case. 

_ One  _ drink. They’re having just one drink. Sirius still has some edits to do for another project later. 

“Yeah, I devoured the series in college. Sort of fell off around book eleven? Twelve? When that multiverse split happened.” Sirius wiggles his fingers in the air as though the threads of spacetime are being jostled there between them, and pride bubbles behind his lungs when Remus laughs. “But the audiobooks make it a little easier to keep up. Although I wish I could listen on the job like most of my friends.”

“What, you mean you can’t have another series running in one ear while you engineer a separate session?” Remus’ eyes are dancing with the little joke, and Sirius can’t keep his own smile from breaking onto his face. That blatant charm had been more than a bit of Sirius’ downfall over the last few days, and to Sirius’ credit he had tried to avoid falling into those shining near-green eyes for about four hours, thank you very much, before letting himself give in.  _ Just _ a bit.

He’s learned a bit more about Remus over the last few days during lunch breaks and stretch breaks and tea breaks, particularly fascinated by the peculiar British way in which Remus prepares his English breakfast—no milk, spot of sugar—and always careful to keep the questions from digging to deeply; Sirius is wont to feel as though he’s making any sort of real meaningful connection beyond simple client geniality. He’s taken talent up on these side-leaning offers of  _ Let’s grab a drink after the session _ before, always resulting in either boring conversation about their work or even more boring sex. Sirius has never known a voice actor to be terribly three-dimensional.

But Remus is out here breaking all sorts of molds. 

He dropped out of drama school when an illness took him unawares when he was 19–never detailed what sort of illness, but Sirius knows how to read a tightened jaw and doesn’t ask. He worked in copywriting for several years to pay bills after then and did lots of scratch voiceover because of it, which eventually led to most of the companies using his scratch instead of recasting because it was so good. So Remus worked in commercial VO for a few years, making okay money, until a chance meeting at a bar at which he was moonlighting put him in touch with a very drunk Gilderoy Lockhart mourning the fact that none of the actors vying for Maxwell Hind’s voice on the upcoming audiobook collection were good enough. 

_ Well, sir— _ and Sirius had legitimately almost slid to pieces with desire as he laughed aloud at Remus’ dredged-up mimicry of himself aping Hind aping himself when he’d leaned across the bar to catch Lockhart’s attention— _ that’s a terribly unfortunate turn of events. Might I suggest drowning it in a beautiful dame called vermouth? She bites, but she’ll kiss it better afterwards. _

Suffice to say, Remus had been cast on the spot. 

Presently at the brewery, Sirius finds himself accidentally draining his fourth pint as Remus finishes a story about building a recording booth at home. He also finds Remus biting his lip, an unconscious look Sirius ha seen from him between takes countless times during their record. 

He also  _ also _ finds his own pulse dividing itself between nesting very high in his neck and very deeply below his belt. Sirius swallows. Remus tracks the movement in his throat with hungry eyes.

“Do you have the rest of your afternoon free?” Remus asks it lightly, turned slightly sideways, and Sirius’ gut pulls pleasantly to see tension writ through the backs of Remus’ fingers as he drums them on the table. Sirius shrugs. 

“Technically I have some edits for another project waiting back at the studio, but I can put them off for a bit.” He’s lucky his voice stays as calm as it does. 

Remus’ gaze flashes and his grin is encompassing. “Care to walk me back to my hotel?”

_ Oh.  _ So  _ that’s _ where this is going. 

_ Fuck yes. _

Sirius spends the short walk downtown distracting himself by telling Remus about the city and about his time here—working, living, gigging, narrowly avoiding inflating with brave pride when Remus lights up with a bright,  _ Oh, what do you play? _ Thank all that’s holy the hotel is only just a half-block away by then, or else Sirius might have killed the chance of a good lay with his usual compulsive oral report on synthesizers and acoustic experimentalism. Something tells him Remus would be more than happy to listen, but Sirius is still grateful to have happenstance help him edit.

They’re in the elevator up to the twelfth floor not three seconds after the door shuts before Remus turns to him, gaze deep and vaguely predatory, and pulls Sirius in by his jacket lapels for a crushing kiss. 

Sirius grips hard on the wall railing behind him with one arm and anchors himself to Remus’ bicep with the other, and then he’s closing his eyes and tasting Remus’ mouth and losing himself to the blissful madness of following his fancy like this. He grins against Remus’ lips at the daring nature of it all, and he feels Remus smile back as though the emotion has trade through the slide of their tongues.

“What?” It comes out in a little skip of a chuckle, and Sirius sucks him into another deep twist of a kiss before pulling back for a gasp of air. The elevator pings for, what was that, the fifth time? Sirius’ veins vibrate with anticipation, eager to be spat out into the liminal space of an anonymous hotel lobby to guarantee the advent of a good, hard fuck.

“Pardon if this is presumptuous,” Sirius says against those devilishly-lovely lips, “but I have a feeling you’re going to give me a very welcome and thorough fucking.”

“Right you are. And it seems we’re giving  _ someone _ a bit if a show as lead-up.” Remus speaks hot against the shell of his ear, and Sirius’ insides thrill when he breathes another giddy laugh and looks up sideways at the subtle eye of the security camera in the top corner of the elevator carriage. His light penchant for exhibitionism can sometimes be a burden, but as it stands now Sirius is finding it perfectly amenable to the way Remus has opened this gambit. 

By some miracle of Sirius’ months-long dry spell looking like it will be smashed to pieces in a glorious crash, the two kiss with a mad fervor of roaming hands that goes entirely uninterrupted for the remaining seven floors. Remus pulls back as the door trundles open for their destination, his hair disheveled and his lips plumped by contact, and rakes a stare over Sirius with an approving glimmer. “Come on then.”

Sirius would have dropped his keycard at least twice trying to fumble open a hotel door with so much adrenaline in his system, but Remus ushers them in easily. He’s on Sirius again before the door is shut completely, shoving him against its flat with a plasticine  _ clack  _ as the studs on the back of Sirius’ jacket hit the fire exit map posted there, and Sirius’ limbs are watery with the show of control. After another moment, Remus begins guiding him gently by the waist over to the well-made bed at the center of the room without bothering to turn on the lights. Sirius falls backward when his shins meet the mattress, and Remus follows easily. 

Remus is on his neck with open-mouthed kisses and pushing Sirius’ jacket from his shoulders with sure hands before Sirius can even ask for it. His heartbeat is thunderous, victorious, slamming against his ribs in a heavy pulse, and he’s fucking wild for it. Neither of them waste breath as they shed their clothes, eager to be naked, primed to fuck after four goddamn  _ long  _ days of nothing but sexual tension between them. Sirius laughs at the memory of trying to shut down his arousal during each session, oblivious to the fact Remus had wanted him as well—the laughter makes it way out into the wild of the bedroom, the middle-dark with thick hotel curtains drawn across the window and only letting a tiny shaft of light in, just illuminated enough for Sirius to see Remus smile impishly at the sound. “That good already?”

“I haven’t has sex in months.” Sirius’ voice is still colored with a laugh, and Remus takes his own humor at that as he grabs Sirius behind the knees and pulls him close, on his back beneath Remus with the actor kneeling there in all his crepuscular, naked glory. Sirius’ mouth is watering quite literally and wants to have him in every way possible. 

“Then I’ll make sure to give you a glorious prodigal return.” Remus leans forward and kisses him into the bed, swiping aside the chocolate left on the pillow by housekeeping, and Sirius almost comes apart when Remus’ hand wraps around his cock. He only just keeps from crying out, choking slightly on his air past the luxurious twist of Remus’ tongue around his own, and bucks up into the touch as though blindly following the pull of some divine compulsion. Remus groans low at that, something that sounds like approval, and one of his hands goes out to root briefly through the bedside table. 

“Been making your way through some solid American men then?” Sirius smirks around another kiss when he hears the telltale sound of a lubricant cap snapping open, and Remus sniffs a low laugh to himself when he briefly pulls his hand away from Sirius’ cock. Sirius is about to lament the loss of touch before it returns within the moment, slick and warm and  _ oh, _ this is so much better than masturbation. He always forgets how much more he loves having a partner with him between the sheets. 

“Not yet on this trip, no. I don’t fuck when I’m in the middle of recording. You’re breaking in this bed with me; happy wrap day, Sirius.”

Remus’s voice is light and happy into the curve of Sirius’ shoulder, licking and sucking along the sharp curve of collarbone, and Sirius laughs another breathless leap of pleasure out into the air. “I’m  _ honored.” _

“As am I.” Remus punctuates the low rumble in his voice by mouthing at the cord of Sirius’ neck, twisting his palm richly at the head of his cock, and Sirius arches into it with a delectable groan. “Would you care to have me fuck your thighs then?”

Sirius’ arousal sharpens with a delicious jab and he can’t bite back a groan as Remus eases Sirius’ knees together and presses the head of his cock in hot, dry introduction to the seam made there. “Absolutely, holy shit,  _ please.” _

Remus chuckles again to himself, that pleasant little huff of mirth, and Sirius is torn between appreciating the sweetness of the sound and dissolving to bits with the feeling of Remus spreading a palmful of lubricant between his legs. “On your side then, if you’d be so kind?”

Sirius obeys immediately, eager to press back into Remus’ body and lose himself in somebody else’s touch, and it isn’t long before they strike a sharp tempo that makes Sirius’ blood sing beneath his skin.

“Fuck yes,  _ oh _  God, Remus!”

Bucking and sliding along with the actor’s pace, Sirius reaches back and grabs Remus by the hair at the nape of his neck—the hair Sirius had been mooning over for the last several days and feels just as he had hoped; silky, thick, damp with the traces of coital sweat. Prone on his side, his back flush against Remus’ chest while Remus fucks between Sirius’ thighs with almost punishing accuracy, Sirius is in heaven.

“You look so fucking good like this, ‘ve been thinking about it all week.” Remus’ breath is hot and accurate at Sirius’ ear, just like his hand on Sirius’ cock, slippery-sweet, and Sirius breathes a ragged laugh. 

“Good thing I didn’t know ‘til now, we never would have finished the book.”

The low and approving hum low in Remus’ chest runs a riot through Sirius veins as Remus adjusts his footing and deepens his thrusts. Sirius looks down and appreciates the way he feels arousal twist even hotter inside him at the way Remus’ cock delves richly back and forth through the swell of his thighs. “I would have bent you over that console desk,” Remus growls, “and fucked the  _ lights _ out of you.”

Sirius gasps and, before he knows it, breathes “Use the voice, use the fucking voice.”

“What,  _ Hind?” _ Bless him, Remus sounds amused instead of disgusted and if Sirius had any controllable thought left beyond  _ Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him ‘til he comes, _ he would be mortified. But as it stands, he only nods and mewls the affirmative. Remus breathes another low chuckle, smoky and sweet and  _ goddammit,  _ Sirius is going to come far sooner than he had planned at this rate but it’s  _ all so good— _ “Alright, Sirius.”

His name groaned as the grizzled supernatural detective goes straight to Sirius’ cock, and he doesn’t hold back the wanton cry that leaps out alongside the sensation. This is so fucking stupid, but  _ so fucking hot. _ He decides immediately that shame is for the birds.

“Are you going to come for me?” Remus strokes him languorously as he scrapes his teeth up Sirius’ neck, and the uncanny heat of that voice is everything. “Are you going to milk my cock, all thick and hard between your legs, and come all over yourself for me?”

Sirius’ resolve shudders mightily, and he’s absolutely in thrall to it. “Fuck yes, Remus,  _ yes.” _

“Come on, Sirius, show me what you look like when you come. I dreamed it up all sorts of ways watching you from the booth, I want to fucking see it now. Come on.”

Man alive, Sirius wants to badly to hold on and make this last, but Remus’ pace is harried and deep and Sirius can’t grab for purchase on his resolve—can’t resist the feeling of Remus’ fist around his cock, can’t ignore the damp heat of their skin where they touch, can’t ignore the complicated tangle of their legs where Remus has him pinned; Sirius is helpless to it, trapped in the best way possible, almost there, coming,  _ coming— _

_ “Ah,  _ fuck! Yes!  _ Ah!” _ Sirius arches his body sharply as orgasm rips through him like a snare catching around a tree, tight and fast and hard and over and _ over _ again,  _ Fuck! _ He shoots at least five times out of Remus’ grip, loses count, spattering the sheets and coating Remus’ fist as he cries out around bliss like a second language on his tongue. Remus spreads it onto his own cockhead between Sirius’ legs, dripping and warm, and groans with a broken sound against Sirius’ upper back. 

“So fucking good, Sirius, I’m—oh, shit,  _ oh—!” _ Remus is back to his own voice, lost to sensation, when his core tightens and his hips snap against Sirius and quiver shortly before warm pulses spurt out from his cock onto Sirius’ thighs. It’s the perfect consistency of completion mixing with lubricant and Sirius’ own seed as he pants heavily against Sirius’ neck.

Sirius shudders with pleasure and hums deeply to himself after a few sticky moments of both men catching their breath. “We should do that again.”

Remus pants a laugh and cards a long fall of Sirius’ hair up off his face with his clear hand, his touch tired and heavy. “Cheers. Just need a bit first, am I allowed to request a five even if we aren’t in the studio?”

Sirius laughs and nods into the pillow. Yes. This is good. This is worth the long hours. 

Sirius will have to get back into this fucking book series again. 


End file.
